1 Defining organisational culture
The term ‘culture’ can be difficult to define. It’s a fundamental – but partly intangible – aspect of all social units from whole nations to local communities; and is part of commercial, voluntary or other organisations and even individual families. Even if you can’t define it, most people will have an intuitive understanding of what culture is and, sometimes, strong feelings about what it is not.
Activity 1 Defining culture
Consider your understanding of ‘culture’. What kinds of behaviours, ways of doing things and thinking might be parts of culture? And what do you think might be meant by ‘organisational culture’? Make notes in the box below.
Discussion
Culture can sometimes be defined as ‘how things are done around here’ (Mullins, 2005, p. 891). This is both vague and informative, and seems to be symbolic of culture itself: culture, after all, is somewhat vague and intangible. Aspects that are often included as a part of culture include language, religions and myths, rituals and behaviours such as typical greetings or how meals are served and eaten, as long as these are shared by a group of people. More technically, Edgar Schein, an influential organisational culture theorist, defines culture as:
… a pattern of shared basic assumptions learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, which has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.
If you think of a business organisation as a group of people with some shared purposes, then Schein’s definition works well for our purposes here. Schein is widely regarded as a pioneer in the field of organisational culture and his work has informed much of organisational culture theory (see Tadesse Bogale and Debela, 2024, for an overview of literature in this field).